Day Twenty One
Auckland
01.10.2009 - 01.10.2009
19 °C
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New Zealand - The North Island
on petty1912's travel map.
It rained intermittently today, with a bit of wind to keep things interesting. We caught a bus downtown this morning from the camp ground, which took an hour. It was an interesting drive in that we sat amongst the locals going about their business. There were lots of uni students on the bus and all of them got off at the Auckland University City Campus. The campus is in the city centre and is a hustle and bustle of activity with busy city streets intersecting the different buildings.
We got off at Customs Street and walked directly to the most prominent building in the city – the Sky Tower. It took us about 15 minutes or so to get there with the kids. What an amazingly good looking tower it is too.
The Sky Tower is the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, at 328 metres. The main observation level is 186m from the base and the Skydeck viewing platform is at 220m. It is just below the Skydeck that idiots can pay money to bungy jump off for an adrenaline rush. My boys loved watching people bungy off the edge and watch them land at the bottom. As I am not a fan of heights I didn’t peer over the edge to see whether they landed safely. When we first got there, only a handful of us were admiring the view. Within half and hour the decks were getting crowded and noisy with school children on holidays. I was glad it just wasn’t my own being rowdy for a change.
I really took time to enjoy the building and it’s concrete construction. It is pretty windy up at the top and I can imagine the stresses and strains on such a structure are immense. It cost us $80 to check it out which isn’t cheap, but you can’t not go and have a look either.
Auckland City unlike Wellington is very spread out. This was to be our downfall. Other than the Sky Tower we didn’t get to do much else other than eating and shopping. The boys were tired from walking and Beedo didn’t feel much like it either. In hindsight we toyed with a tourist day trip and decided it was too expensive ($80). It would have taken us to all the major sights and was also a get off and get back on at anytime arrangement. The bus into the city cost us $22. It has been a very busy nearly three weeks and the sprawl of Auckland was our undoing. So, we got an early afternoon bus back to the camp ground and started to pack up and tidy the motorhome. Tomorrow we hope to take a quick drive out to Piha before handing the motorhome in and going to our motel for the evening.
Tomorrow will be our last full day in New Zealand. Bummer!
Posted by petty1912 01.10.2009 02:43 Archived in New Zealand
Did you manage to walk across the glass floor panels?
01.10.2009 by tracey petersen